This invention is a method of producing a colored print from an electronic version of a black and white or color original. More specifically, it is a software package installed in a color printer that will accept a black and white or color original described in a page description language and, automatically or under user control, output a print, parts of which may be printed in various colors.
A multitude of page description languages (PDLs), including Postscript lnterpress, are available as interfaces between computers and printers; some have been widely standardized. Most PDLs can specify black and white area patterns, bitmaps, lines, and text characteristics like fonts, sizes, and other attributes (e.g., underline). Some are beginning to specify colors in a variety of ways.
In the past, most drawing, painting, publishing, and graphics software packages produced documents in black and white, and color printers were rare. Thus, many documents currently exist which are completely black and white. These black and white pages, of course, print in black and white even when sent to a color printer.
However, as color printers become more prevalent, there is a desire to use existing black and white software to produce pages which can print in color. There is also a desire to add functionality to rudimentary color software which does not allow may coloring features. Finally, there is also an increasing desire in the industry to re-edit formerly black and white pages to include some color. At least one presentation graphics package expedites this last desire by allowing users to turn all objects with a particular black and white pattern into a color from among a limited list of colors. Similarly, text, bitmaps and lines can be edited to create a color document from a former black and white document.
Such a system is described on page 137 of the Cricket Presents User's Guide. This is a graphics presentation software package which imports black and white files, and allows users to more easily edit them into files with colored text, lines, bitmaps or patterns. In essence, Cricket Presents gives users some shortcuts for editing black and white documents to include color.
One adverse characteristic of this system is that colors on the display often look very different when printed by a color printer, yet the user has no control in Cricket presents over the color definitions at the printer. If the color is not satisfactory, the document must be re-edited or redesigned. A second problem is that the original black and white document is lost in the process of color editing, and so must be stored separately for printing on a black and white printer. The user then has two documents to manage, and any changes to the text of one, for example, must be made to the other as well. A third disadvantage is that if the user has a large number of black and white documents, each one must be individually edited for color, a cumbersome task, Fourth, the user has a very limited selection of colors. Fifth, because color printers are expensive, there is often only one color printer to serve many users in a group. However, even if there is only one printer, there must be a copy of the Cricket Presents software running on the computer of each person who wants to use its color editing capabilities.
Another system to partially color black and white text documents is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,857,955. A two-color printer is used. One color, usually black, is used for the basic text, and the second color is used as a highlight color. The printer is programmed to identify one feature of the incoming data, such as italics, bold characters, parentheses, etc, and print that identified text in the highlight color. This avoids some of the problems of Cricket Presents. First, the software is in the printer, so each computer which wants to use the color printer does not need a separate copy of the software. Also, the black and white document does not have to be edited by hand by the user; the printer automatically does the coloring. However, this system is limited to one color not under the control of the user, is extremely limited in the features it can color, can color only one type of feature per document, works only on text, and cannot operate on the standard page description languages in use today.
A more adaptable and flexible system for coloring black and white documents is needed, one which would allow users control over changing the printer's colors, would allow documents to be automatically colored if desired without extensive editing by the user, would color a large variety of features, would give users manual control to change the automatic coloring defaults on a page-by-page basis, would reside in the color printer so that multiple copies of the software are not needed, and would be able to work with the standard page description languages.